


Winter Birds

by gregthepaladin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alpha Timeline, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-27
Updated: 2012-04-27
Packaged: 2017-11-04 09:42:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gregthepaladin/pseuds/gregthepaladin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave is on the press circuit for the new SBaHJ movie, and takes time to think of his sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Birds

**Author's Note:**

> oops I put in too many motifs for something so short, and also the most recent updates contradict almost all of this but WHATEVER DEALWITHIT.gif

He's on the road again, doing press junkets for the premier.

 _sBAHjh them ovie_ was set to debut, and he was hitting all the major outlets. Today Show, Letterman, Fallon, Kimmel, Ferguson. Daily Show. Hosting spot on SNL, where he was liked enough to be the first person to host three episodes in a row. 

In New York, when he could, he took the time to sit in Central Park. Despite the creeping chill of mid-November sinking in, he loved the place. Antiseptic clean, all of nature's teeming self driven out by the spear of winter and the general abrasion of the largest city to ever exist. 

He listened to the winter robins. Most birds migrated south for the winter, but the robins were too stubborn to leave. He admired them. He heard them call to each other. He remembered hearing, once, that winter birds had a language all their own. It was made of only two chrips: one that meant something like "I am here." 

The other call meant "I'm here too."

With a new SBaHJ movie coming out more or less every eighteen months, this two-week stretch usually gave him a kind of exalted energy, that allowed him to sleep only an hour or two for every waking twenty. Audiences loved him, and why wouldn't they? Even the Batterwitch couldn't brainwash people thoroughly enough to keep them away from his works.

The Batterwitch. The trolls. The game. John, Jade. _Rose._ He remembered it all. He remembered Daves of other timelines dying. He rememebered laughing with Terezi, and trying to protect Jade, and Karkat yelling. He remembered Derse. He and his sister, plummeting into a sun of their own creation, knowing death, and sharing a glance that said _at least we're together in this_.

He knew Rose was out there. He had seen her on TV, read about her. Everyone had. _Complacency of the Learned_ was massive, and he was a very public fan of it. He'd once attended San Diego Comic Con dressed in full makeup and costume as Calmasis. Of course, he never made reference to it, and if asked about it, he simply implied that he had no idea what the questioner was talking about.

Every time he was here, he wondered if he would run into her. He worried that she might see him on this very bench, listening to birds. He knew he could never let that happen. That there would be too much danger in a direct meeting. That he would never get to see his sister.

He would never get to meet Rose.

Every time he stepped into a coffee shop or bookstore, he wondered if maybe she would be there. What would he say? He would have to immediately leave. He knew that. And still, he couldn't help thinking about it. About being able to tell her that I miss you, I love you, I'm tired of being alone. I miss everything we did, I miss having someone to talk to when I am afraid, and when I am not. I want to protect you, and I am sorry that I can't, Rose.

I want to tell her everything, he thought. I want to tell her how proud I am of her, that she has gotten where she is. That she became the person she wanted to be, that she's made genuinely amazing things. That he thought of her first thing in the morning and just before falling asleep at night.

He saw the messages she put in her books. The ones only he would understand. The ones that were her, calling out to him, telling him that she hadn't forgotten either. They couldn't talk to each other, they couldn't speak, but they could acknowledge each other. They could communicate as the winter birds did.

His films would whisper to her "I am here."

Her books would say to him "I am too."


End file.
